


A Perfect Memory

by nimblermortal



Series: Before They Were Gods [5]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Art, Gen, Honesty, Lies, Ragnarok, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One time Loki disappears because he's sitting by a river about to be dammed. Odin finds him and they talk about little brother things like Ragnarök.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Memory

Once, when Loki disappeared, it was Odin who went to find him.

Loki had not gone far. He was sitting half off a cliff over a high river, his face streaked with spray from the waterfall, some of the droplets collected in a ball that hovered over his hand. He did not seem to notice Odin, but his other hand swept over to the globe in what could perhaps be interpreted as a welcoming gesture, so Odin joined him.

The water he was holding did not reflect their faces; instead it seemed as if Odin could see through it to the stream below, the moss growing across the stones, the small fuzz of trees tentatively sticking out their roots to see if they might grow here. When Odin leaned forward, the view changed, as if he had flown across the canyon. The picture was even sharper there, every detail of the foliage clear.

Loki glanced at the scene, and twisted his hand, and when Odin sat back again he could see a fox disappearing into the brush by the pool at the bottom of the canyon.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Keep it. Hide it under the bed. Give it to some dwarf as if ‘twere treasure,” Loki suggested.

Odin remembered the river of fire where they had met, and watching Loki twist his creation into a weapon when he became aware someone had seen him. Ashamed not of the seidr, but of making something soft of it. That he could now sit quietly and work while Odin listened to him breathe - if all of Asgard vanished in flame, then it would not have been built for nothing.

“I don’t have your foresight, but even I can see you’ll need to dam this,” said Loki. “A city the size you’re building, the Handahófáin won’t be sufficient water for its people.”

“Like we’d drink water,” Odin scoffed, as if he had not seen the same thing through the eye that lay white and gleaming at the bottom of Mimir’s well. “What do you know of the future?”

“Nothing but guesses. Everyone seems to know more than me,” said Loki, laughing. “They gossip in corners worse than my mother’s family. Something about an argument.”

“I should like to meet your mother,” said Odin. “Do you want to know what those gossips say?”

Loki’s laugh cut off like a river dammed. “My lord, no,” he said, and his hand closed over the globe of water, and Odin’s breath caught for fear he had destroyed it. “I can guess. I - it would be a mercy not to know, until it happens.”

Odin frowned. “But if you knew, we could change -“

“No man can change his fate. The river will be dammed; this counselor will argue. If I don’t know - I can pretend, my lord. I can lie.”

“Nothing can stop you from lying, my brother,” said Odin, unnerved and desperate to stop his friend from this unwarranted seriousness.

“As soon tell a river not to flow,” Loki agreed, and flicked one hand as the other opened. The water globe was unharmed in his palm; under his gesture, a tiny Odin came to sit by the tiny waterfall. Odin examined it from several angles, unsurprised to see himself represented perfectly from all sides. He had seen Loki looking.

“I thought you liked fire,” he said. Loki looked at him, and laughed, and his face changed to her face, and to several other permutations as Odin watched and refused to be repulsed.

“I am all things to all people,” he said at last, returning to the visage Odin was most familiar with and hefting his globe thoughtfully. After a moment his face twisted, and he threw it into the canyon. Odin almost cried out at the loss; but Loki would be offended at the idea he had created art. And he could see with one eye what Loki did not want him to: that the globe hit rock and did not break, and slid down the rock face to some crack or cranny where Loki could find it again later.

“You never put yourself in,” said Odin.

“What, and mar a perfect memory?” Loki asked.“No, brother. Let’s go back and tell the builders where to put the dam.”

They left, the brothers, speaking of nothing; and at the bottom of the falls, one drop of water dripped into another and sank through it, until a pike caught it in its mouth and carried it home to its den, where no one would find it for a thousand years.

**Author's Note:**

> Ragnar means ‘strong counselor’, and rök means arguments. Abstractly, Ragnarök. Also, Handahófáin is literally a combination of the Icelandic words for ‘random’ and ‘river’ (as per Google Translate). I would laugh at myself for being bad at naming, except that I’ve heard of Unn the Deep-Minded.
> 
> Oh, and the pike is Andvari, of course.


End file.
